Gas turbine engines are used to power aircraft or various other types of vehicles and systems. Engines typically include a compressor that receives and compresses an incoming gas such as air. A combustor receives the compressed gas, mixes it with fuel, and ignites the mixture to produce a high-pressure, high-velocity exhaust gas. A transition scroll receives, redirects, and provides the exhaust gas to a turbine that extracts energy for the engine. The transition scroll is a hollow, generally coiled component that receives a tangential flow of the hot combustion gases into its interior and exhausts these gases through an annular outlet into the turbine.
The hot combustion gases create a temperature environment that may limit the useful operating time, and ultimately, the component life of the engine assembly. Particularly, the transition scroll can be sensitive to variations and extremes in temperature resulting from the combustor exhaust gases. This consideration is complicated by the helical, asymmetrical nature of the transition scroll and the non-uniform temperatures of the exhaust gases exiting from the combustor. Conventional systems and methods for cooling the transition scroll, such as louvers and impingement cooling, have met with mixed success at best.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide improved systems and methods for cooling the transition scroll. Furthermore, other desirable features and characteristics of the present invention will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description of the invention and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and this background of the invention.